According to a Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) report, each year, airliners and corporate jets across the world incur excessive costs attributed to apron damages. In an airport environment, a plurality of aircraft and airport vehicles are traveling to and from various airport locations, including airport docking stations, airport gates, airport terminals, aircraft taxiways and/or runways, and the like.
While traveling in an airport environment, it is critical for an aircraft to maintain adequate clearance from obstacles presented by the external aircraft, airport vehicles, and airport buildings and other structures, in order to avoid collisions. Many current collision-avoidance systems define threat warning functions based on the position of the intruder vehicles or objects and a constant surrounding boundary, but do not consider the relative shape and size of the intruders. Additionally, current collision-avoidance systems are often limited by a field of view of incorporated imaging sensors, and/or are ineffective for all operating environments. Airport traffic increasingly involves very large airliners with very long wingspans, which may reduce wingtip clearance margins between aircraft while in motion on airport ground surfaces, and which may make proper wingtip clearance relative to ground structures and other ground vehicular traffic more of a concern. Additionally, operations at an airport require a number of airport vehicles to operate in close proximity to airplanes. Aircraft service vehicles may require them to pass from under or over a parked or moving aircraft without posing collision dangers to the aircraft. The complex and dynamic airport environment requires all aircraft and vehicles operating at an airport to be safely separated from each other and from the airport structures.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide additional information regarding potential conflicts or collisions onboard an aircraft. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.